More Banking Statistics: Home Ownership

Following on from the comments on UK Bank Stats from the BBA, and the report from TheCityUK, here's a few more statistics focused upon home ownership.

Just a century ago, nine out of ten homes were rented in the UK compared to only one in three today.

Since 1976, owner-occupier households have risen from 55% of all households to 66% today. Meanwhile, local authority housing provided by government councils has gone down from a third of all housing to just 1 in 20 today.

Thank you Margaret Thatcher!

Equally, I wonder what this picture will look like in two or three years, as the credit crisis and house price slump looks likely to continue in the UK.

Either way, this still does not make the UK the largest home owning nation of Europe. That award goes to Hungary and Romani.

About Chris M Skinner

Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, the Finanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal’s Financial News. To learn more click here...

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Another interesting point made by Lesley Titcomb of the FSA at the Financial Services Research Forum seminar on Tuesday was that levels of home ownership did not substantially alter during the boom in mortgage borrowing to 2008. You can see that in your top chart, in that owner occupied homes as a share of all households did not alter between 1997 and 2007. In fact the last major shift seemed to have been between ’92 and ’97, in the years immediately after the last housing bust.

In reference to the last line of the article, what indeed does any of this have to do with Romanian gypsies? the fact is more like Romanian gypsies are a travelling community and are unlikely to own their own property. Apart from that, the fact that property owners in Romania are the “least in debt” to the bank is surprising on the one hand, and yet not so surprising on the other, as Romanians throughout history have, both as individuals, and at the national level, always paid their debts, or been remarked on by paying taxes and austerity to the point of impoverishment, from the time of the tributes paid in gold, livestock and even human resources (janissaries) to the Ottomans in exchange for “semi-independence”, to the Phanariots when there was even an “air tax”, down the ages to the Ceausescu and the repayment of the entire foreign debt to the IMF (not that this made Ceausescu any friends, foreign or domestic), and now in the great “global economic crisis” where every country in the world is being screwed by banks and governments to the tune of so called “austerity”. In the end though, the people who are liked best by the purse holders and speculators are not those who pay their debts, but those who don’t, because it’s being in DEBT that makes you more easily controlled, not paying your debts, although there is a fine line in some situations. In the next little while, do not be surprised if Hungary and Romania are kicked out of the EU. Whether this has any connection to the statistics above, it would be difficult to comment or correlate.

and by the way you misspelt Romania as “Romani”. This will only add to the confusion for the ignorant, who may believe there is a correlation between words Romania and “Romany” otherwise more correctly known as gypsies, when of course there is not.

Chris Skinner

My reference to Romanian gypsies is UK irony (or sarcasm) as why would we know Romania as a nation of gypsies – UK media portrays most of Romania’s citizenship as being gypsies who want to live here on benefits – if they have the highest percentage of home ownership.
The reference to Romani is an error, and is missing the final ‘a’ for Romania.
And there is a relationship between Romany and Romania as illustrated by the link I provided:http://www.eliznik.org.uk/RomaniaHistory/minority-gypsies.htm
The Gypsy peoples originate from Sind region now in Pakistan. Their Rom language is close to the older forms of Indian languages. The three tribes of Rom, Sinti, and Kale probably left India after a succession of campaigns in Sind through the C11, initially spending time in Armenia and Persia, then moving into the Byzantine Empire after the Seljuk Turk attacks on Armenia. Within the Byzantine Empire they dispersed into the Balkans reaching Wallachia (1385) and Moldavia (1370) ahead of this area falling to the Ottoman Turks. Other groups also moved through India to Gujarat and south of Delhi. Gypsy populations can still be found along all these migration routes.
When entering west Europe they initially had letters of protection from the King of Hungary. This privileged situation did not last long as amazement at their way of life commonly led to hostilities. The Gypsy way of life still leads to hostilities from the people of their host nations. Europeans regard “private property” as sacrosanct, whereas gypsies do not have a word for “possess”, which gives rise to two incompatible ways of life and a continual problem of gypsies being regarded as “thieves” from the European’s view.
In each host nation gypsies appear to take on the religion, names and language of their hosts, but within the Rom they maintain their Rom language, names, music, customs and Indian looks. This tight community has meant that after some six hundred years there is still a large population of gypsies not integrated or assimilated with Romanians.
From the time of their arrival in Romania Gypsies were the slaves of the landowners, only to be emancipated in 1851. While in Romania some of the Gypsies took to speaking a version of Romanian called Bayesh which can be heard in some of the songs of Gypsy groups recorded in Hungary. Nowadays about 40% of the Gypsies still speak Romany and many can still be seen travelling in lines of carts along the roads of Romania. The majority live in the towns and villages, some fully integrated into villages, some in large ornate houses standing out from the Romanians, but others in small buildings on scraps of lands on the villages edges.
The Rom tribes distinguish themselves by the names of their trades:
Lăutari = musicians and dancers
Căldărari (Kalderash) = Tin and coppersmiths
Argintari = Jewellers
Fierari = Blacksmiths
Zlateri = gold panners
Ghurara = sieve makers
Lovar = horse dealers